Daily Writing Prompt: What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?

What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?

To answer this question, I have to go back quite a few years to when I was a teenager in High School. I have always been very creative and as such, I always saw myself working in an art related field. I took every single art class I could including sculpture, painting, design, creative writing, print making and probably many more I can’t remember. At the beginning of my grade 12 year I had decided. Architecture… or Civil Engineering. I wanted to design buildings. I romanticized the idea, daydreaming about sitting at my window desk in my highrise apartment, sketchbook out, designing the next new skyscraper.

Then reality hit. I needed math to be an architect. I couldn’t just draw. While I did good in my math classes, I took university level math in High School, I hated it. I only took it to get into the program and my teenage brain didn’t connect the dots. 

Career path immediately abandoned.

Which was so good, because architecture was so not for me.

People are my thing. Not buildings.

I took one Psychology class in High School and was hooked. I loved it and switched my major in all my university applications after the first day. I got accepted and that started my journey in human services. Which is so my thing. I love my career with my whole soul I can’t imagine doing anything else for a living. I didn’t end up graduating with a Psychology degree and instead pivoted to Addictions Counselling… Which I love even more than Psych.

I had a minor identity crisis during the pandemic, which I think we all did, and briefly considered going back to school to get an English degree. Thank god I didn’t do that because I think it would have made me hate writing. I don’t like being forced to write or be creative. It needs to flow naturally.

Now that I’m older I think a Master’s in Social Work is in my future. I want to help people in every capacity possible and Incan just do more with a Master’s.

While my work now is not necessarily creative, I work in a space where I get to flex my creative muscles and it is the perfect fit for me. Sometimes things just work out!